Who lives here?

May 11, 2015

Whoever presides, we will overcome

Well, the election results are in and the Tories now have a majority.

I stayed up all of last Thursday night to watch. In fact, I sat in the same seat from 9:30pm Thursday night until 6pm Friday evening watching everything. I haven't been so interested in an election before, it was history unfolding in front of my eyes and I was riveted.

The fact that Labour has lost almost every constituency in Scotland to the SNPs is almost revolutionary. In this country, there was a time when it was just a contest between two parties - Labour and Conservatives - with Liberal Democrats hanging around in the background. In fact, it was kind of boring.

This election has shown that people can force tremendous upheaval and change with their vote. No longer will politicians parrot out the usual platitudes to the electorate. Now they're going to have to work hard to genuinely engage with the public and stop treating us like morons, like obstacles to overcome in the efforts to claim their fat salaries.

For obvious reasons, governments can really stuff up our retirement plans, but Martin and I decided many years ago that we would adapt our plans to the policies of whoever was in power so we still achieve our goals. I go to great efforts to make sure I read as many sources of information as I can and work out how the issues will impact on us now and in the future, and work to mitigate any negative impact or take advantage of any positive impact as soon as possible.

The next five years will be extremely important to Martin as he approaches his retirement. The next election will fall exactly one year before his planned retirement date, so we have to be on the ball about making vital decisions depending on who gets into power. Pensions are very attractive things for governments to fiddle with, so if it looks like any of that fiddling will affect us negatively it may mean Martin has to retire earlier than planned to ensure he reaps the benefits before any new legislation comes into play.

Being forewarned is being forearmed. The information you need to make these decisions is out there, in fact, we are drowning in information. The hardest part is sorting through all the dross to find the nuggets of truth and wisdom.